A Comparison, Diigo vs Pinterest
Pinterest in essence is content curator, a virtual pin board to store and save information in one organized place. This is not a new concept and many other programs have been operating with the same ideas, functionalities and capabilities as Pinterest. Some of these include, Zoo Tools, Evernote, Scoop.it, Pearl Trees and Symbaloo. They each have their own qualities and limitations, visual and technical appeal, I would like to briefly compare two similar cloud collecting resources to Pinterest, from exploring Diigo myself and also reading through the web page, Student Learning with Diigo(Cockrell, 2012). Diigo provides the ability to set up unlimited groups, useful if teaching multiple sections or if you share different resources with different groups of people. On Pinterest users are able to set up different boards for the same use, both sites have the option of individual or group creation. Diigo has the ability to show highlighted text on websites and for sticky notes to explain to the website. Pinterest does not have this capability and only saves websites that have an image associated with the page, accompanied by a similar feature to comment on the information. Diigo also has the ability to host a discussion based on a particular comment or resource. With Pinterest users can only interact by commenting on other user’s pins or to follow their board creations. Resources are categorised with keywords which can be found through search drives. Diigo has a more academic feel to it as Pinterest is a more enjoyable experience. Although limited with pinning only images, some people have found this was easier to remember and recognise the original website and importance compared to looking at the text shown on Diigo. But having extra tools such as highlighting important text within sites was a time saver when looking back for important info. Pinterest has the option of linking with your Facebook and twitter accounts to publicise and share what you have been finding on the site, making it more social. Both of these bookmarking sites are powerful tools in the classroom, it depends on teaching area, students and projects as to which is to be considered to use. With my teaching area being Visual Art, I prefer using Pinterest, first of all for its immediate visual presentation of images.